Health4Rural

We are solving the problems of systemic healthcare exclusion caused by low government healthcare expenditure, social instability and poor human resource availability in underserved communities in Nigeria. Our specific focus are neglected rural, immigrant and conflict-affected communities.

It was reported by the World Bank in June 2018 that about 90 million (46%) Nigerians live below the poverty line, by implication living on less than N600 ($1.59) daily. The 2022 government healthcare budget was N300 (less than $1) per citizen, creating an over 70% out-of-pocket healthcare spending. These figures are projected to worsen with population increase and economic weakening, thereby further excluding much more Nigerians especially the underserved from the healthcare system.

Health4Rural trains and deploys local youths to provide healthcare to immigrant and neglected rural communities in Nigeria. We partner with private corporate organizations to fund the health of these populations through strong social responsibility agreements. We adopt a community-based medicine approach where we identify local youths, train and deploy them as community healthcare workers to attend to the needs of their communities with medical oversight from the nearest town/city. Our digital One-Stop-Shop (OSS) for health serves as the health and pharmaceutical dispensary unit for the community and is managed by local youths.

Through three development phases, we transition our adopted communities from one without any healthcare services to one with fully residential primary healthcare. Our One-Stop-Shop (OSS) for health covers a wide spectrum of primary healthcare services including maternal and child health, vaccines delivery and th diagnosis and treament of longterm and poverty-linked diseases such as HIV, hypertension, hepatitis, diabetes,  malnutrition, skin diseases, e.t.c

Patient records and inventory at the OSS are managed using an Electronic Public Health Manager, MedIQ, built to advance digital health systems for equitable healthcare in low-resource communities in LMICs. Social events of public heallth concerns are also tracked and analysed on MedIQ. 

Health4Rural is youth-led and youth-driven.

Our primary targets are low-income earners in rural and underserved communities in Nigeria who otherwise will not be able to access healthcare. The high poverty prevalence (over 40%) makes most of this population found at the bottom of the pyramid unable to afford healthcare. Poor representation in annual budges, health plans and policies further maginalize thme from receiving government and targeted non-government interventions. These are the missing millions unrepresented/underrepresented in the National Health and Information System.

Marginalisation of rural communities in Nigeria goes beyond healthcare to all aspects of the communities including water and sanitation, education, housing and poor economic return for farming activities. These factors, also referred to as the social determinants of health, consequently worsen health outcomes and create greater demand for healthcare services.

Health4Rural is serving the needs of underserved populations by providing access to healthcare through our One-Stop-Shop for health managed by empowered local youths. Health4Rural further provide public visibility to the communities through disaggregated and verifiable personal and community health data collected using MedIQ, thereby positinoning them for more equitable representation in health plans, policies and special government and non-governmental inerventions.

Growing up in a middle-income family in Ondo State, Nigeria, healthcare was a major luxury many people in my community could not afford. I coud count on my finger tips the number of times I visited the hospital in my first 20 years, not because I hardly fell ill but because my family could not afford it. I experienced firsthand the sad realities of persons who daily had to choose between health and wealth for the lack of the option to choose both, with several people losing their lives to the bargain, like my brother. The early years of my career exposed me to the worse experiences of people even poorer and with less stable communities than mine. I believe that the right to healthcare is just as important as the right to life and is deserving for all irrespective of socioeconomic status and, more so, that a threat to this right is a direct threat to life. This is the foundational belief on which I founded Pioneer Medical Initiative in 2018. 

Led by myself, Ponmile Ogunjemite, a Nigeria-bred healthcare and business development consultant, our team is driven by our own experiences and the challenges of people around us which are closely associated with those of our beneficiaries.  The team is well-rounded and comprised young innovators with experience cutting across, healthcare, international development, data science and operations/logistics management. 

Our youth workforce of over 150 volunteers and staff are all people with their unique and deep connection to the struggles of the Nigerian Healthcare system. Our multidisciplinary strength positions us well to change

We currently serve over five hundred people across 4 rural and immigrant communities in SouthWest Nigeria. Our first One-Stop-Shop in Awo-Kajola serves about 250 residents of the village and hundred other visiting patients from neighbouring rural camps.

Our one-time outreaches have reached over 5,00 people in various underservved communities across the country.

Our communities need international visibility and support to affirm the values that matter - the right to dignity, the right to healthcare. Through solve we hope their stories will inspire help more undocumented, underrepresented and neglected rural communities.

Secondly to this, we are in need of financial support to grow our health coverage and scope of care in the One-Stop-Shop for health which requires heath equipments and infrasture setup.

We are also in need of technical support to grow our digital patient record and community health management technology, MedIQ. Leveraging MIT’s expertise in develioping software and health technologies, we want todevelop the software data security, resillience and ability to serve the health data and information system needs of larger communities at country level.

Our solution is scalable across Africa, with solve we want to be abel our OSS to one new underserved community in Nigeria.